Interesting Items - Monday Feb 27, 2012 Come visit us at our new web site: www.interestingitems.org Leave your thoughts, comments and opinions. We look forward to hearing from you. Interesting Items Alex Gimarc agim...@ak.net Monday Feb 27, 2012 Howdy all, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy – In this issue:
1. Gleik 2. Expectations 3. Energy 4. Volts 5. Contraception 1. Gleik. The last couple weeks have seen an attempt by the Glo-warmers to create a version of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) e-mail leak scandals on the skeptic side of the argument blow up in their respective faces completely. The two releases of Climategate e-mails badly damaged what little remaining credibility was left on the manmade global warming side of the argument and the Glo-warmers were looking for payback. Enter the yearly Heartland Institute conference on manmade global warming. It is one of the largest and best attended meetings of skeptics, as it is one of the few meetings they are not actively obstructed from attending, publishing for or speaking at. Heartland always invites Glo-warmers to speak, but they rarely attend. They have invited Hansen and Al Gore in the past, but neither chose to attend. This year, they invited one Peter Gleik, who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Chairman of the American Geophysical Union task force on scientific ethics. He is also an active and outspoken advocate of the notion of manmade global warming due to carbon dioxide emissions. Gleik was invited to attend this years’ meeting. During the negotiation, Gleik asked for a list of Heartland’s donors. Heartland refused. Gleik turned down the invitation. But he was not finished. He posed as a member of Heartland’s Board of Directors and via an e-mail phishing gambit got himself added to the internal distribution list for Board documents. He received four documents from Heartland. He then created a fifth document using portions of the four documents received from Heartland. The fifth document was highly incendiary and attempted to make the case that Heartland was attacking science education, working with the oil companies, all the standard green claptrap, etc. It was written to essentially confirm everything the Glo-warmers believe about the skeptics. He then bundled them all together and sent them to a series of Glo-warmer sites. One of which was the desmogblog. Desmogblog then did the Ah Ha! moment routine and the documents were disseminated worldwide with appropriate comments that the greens were shocked, simply shocked. This “so’s your old man” attack on Heartland started falling apart almost immediately when some skeptics took a look at the metadata on the documents. Four were created by Heartland and all had time stamps in central time zone where Heartland is located. The fifth document was scanned on an Epson scanner and had a time stamp of Pacific time zone where Gleik is located. Anthony Watts Watts Up With That blog has a comprehensive discussion of the entire sorry episode. Stephen Mosher and others started looking at the odd fifth document and analyzing the structure of what was said and how it was said and compared it to Gleik’s writings in Forbes and elsewhere. Gleik shortly afterwards admitted to obtaining the documents from Heartland via fraudulent means, confessing to what could be prosecuted as felony wire fraud in at least two states ( Illinois and California ). As yet, he has not admitted that he created the incendiary document but has been called out by both Heartland and other skeptics as its author. Stephen Hayward had a great article on the entire sordid affair in the Weekly Standard this week. Worth reading. 2. Expectations. Obama made a speech last week about how we as Americans ought to lower our expectations for our future and the future of our children and grandchildren. His was a message of diminished expectations, dealing with scarcity and fending off misery. It was hardly a positive message, which opens up Obama and the democrats to any candidate that can simply say we are Americans and we can do better than this. There is a great fear out in the nation that we are on our downslide and that Obama and the democrats are simply presiding over the demise. This is an opening that you can drive an 18wheeler through. 3. Energy. As gasoline prices soar above $5/gallon, the Obama administration and democrats are starting to panic. Remember that one of the vehicles used to ensure his election was an orchestrated price spike in gasoline past $4/gallon in 2008. At the time, democrats and their lackeys in the state run media excoriated George Bush 43 while ensuring no new federal lands were opened for oil and natural gas exploration. This time around, there is no such reportage. We do have the Obama administration blaming Republicans for his decision to cancel permits for the Keystone XL pipeline. We have his claim that we are producing more oil than we have ever done before. We have him and his minions carefully walking around their stated goal of bringing $7-8 gasoline to the US so we can be like Europe and be forced into public transportation and / or Government Motors clown cars. What is the truth? Drill, Baby, Drill remains the simplest solution. While drilling and new production is at an all time high on privately held land, it is approaching a historic low on public lands. Interior Secretary Salazar has removed an enormous amount of public lands in the West from the market, refusing to hold lease sales. Salazar’s Interior has also inflicted the permitorium in the Gulf of Mexico, approving new permits at a rate less than a third than they were approved by previous administrations, locking up millions of barrels of new oil from the US marketplace. We also have the EPA busily crafting new rules that essentially put refineries out of business unless they install multi-billion dollar clean air modifications. Finally, as we have to import more oil from overseas, we are seeing the effect of inflation on the US dollar. The less the dollar is worth, the more foreign oil will cost. We Americans stand on the beginning of a time of energy abundance. The candidate that can bring us into that time will be a hero for generations to come. And all they have to do is to get the feds the Hell out of the way. 4. Volts. There are some drawbacks to crony capitalism, especially for employees of companies which have been selected as winners by the regime. Gas2.org reports that General Electric Healthcare Americas employees received a memo that all new vehicles were going to be Chevy Volts in 2012. This combines the top three crony capitalists: General Electric, which has been recipient of the green energy money dump and owns part of the media cheerleading the Obama administration; Government Motors which are selling the deathtraps called Chevy Volts by the tens per month; and Healthcare Americas which reflects the unconstitutional disaster called ObamaCare. Of course, this is the most expensive solution possible, in addition to the fact that none of the employees want to drive them as demonstrated by the fact that nobody is buying them. But GE will be able to shoe horn their employees into Volts while artificially jacking up sales for Government Motors while both companies continue wandering down the road to economic ruin. This is yet another example why crony capitalism is the antithesis of capitalism and the free marketplace. Reelect Obama or vote for democrats and you will get to see more of this rather than less. 5. Contraception. The Obama reelection campaign orchestrated assault on organized religion continued last week with their claim that the discussion is really about women’s health and contraception. Although the media is all in on the scam, with multiple columns full of outrage and righteous indignation appearing in media nationwide, I am skeptical that they are doing anything to change the discussion. The gambit is an attempt to drag Rick Santorum into the argument, which he is finding it difficult to stay out of as he is a passionate Catholic. Make no mistake, this is not about contraception. It is the functional equivalent of shouting “Squirrel!” to an easily distracted dog (the running joke in the Disney movie Up!”) and watching it run away. The Obamaoids believe all they have to do is shout “Women’s Health” and all single women will instantly run off and vote for them. While single women were strong supporters of Obama in 2008, second only to blacks, there are other issues out there than contraception. I don’t think it will be as successful as they think it will be. More later - - AG "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776. 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